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Monday, January 20, 2014

U.S. Orthodox rabbi pushes back against Israel's Chief Rabbinate

NEW YORK – An agreement reached between the Orthodox
Rabbinical Council of America and Israel’s Chief Rabbinate, in which the latter
pledged to accept letters from RCA members attesting to the Jewishness of
people wanting to marry in Israel, does not put to rest troubling issues, say
Rabbi Avi Weiss and others enmeshed in the issue.

Weiss and at least one other RCA member were suddenly
informed last fall by the Chief Rabbinate, that their letters about Jewish
status were no longer being accepted. The RCA agreement with the Chief
Rabbinate restores their ability to submit letters on behalf of congregants.

Weiss, who founded “Open Orthodox” Yeshivat Chovevei Torah
and Yeshivat Maharat, which last year ordained its first graduating women as
“Orthodox clergy,” has been a lightning rod for controversy in the Orthodox
community. He said, after being notified last October that his word was no
longer being regarded as trustworthy by the Chief Rabbinate, that he suspected
Orthodox politics were at play. It followed some 40 years of Weiss being
regarded as one of the most prominent Orthodox rabbis in America.

And while even on its face the episode concerned some about
the Chief Rabbinate's ability to undermine American Orthodox rabbis’ autonomy,
the backstory is so loaded with intrigue that unanswered questions continue to
worry them.

The RCA agreement “is a very small step,” said Weiss in an
interview Friday. “All Orthodox rabbis in America should be accepted by the
chief rabbis. If they have Orthodox semicha [ordination], they should be
trusted.”

This was not the first episode in which Chief Rabbinate has
asserted itself into decisions made by American Orthodox rabbis. In 2008, after
decades of accepting American Orthodox rabbis’ imprimatur when converting
people to Judaism, the Chief Rabbinate demanded approval of any RCA member who
wanted his converts - or their descendants - accepted as Jewish in Israel.

Weiss and others said, at that time, that the RCA “capitulated” by agreeing to
set up a regional religious court system for conversions populated by rabbis
approved by the Chief Rabbinate. That court system continues to be the only way
that American Orthodox rabbis can assure converts that their Jewishness will be
accepted by Israel’s religious authorities. Rabbi Mark Dratch, the RCA’s
executive vice president, told Haaretz that the regional court system was set
up in response to domestic concerns about the inconsistency of various rabbis’
standards when they converted people.

Shmuel Herzfeld is the rabbi of Ohev Torah: The National
Synagogue, in Washington D.C. He met with Chief Rabbinate officials in
Jerusalem on January 12, at Weiss’ behest, along with Weiss’ Israeli attorney.
“The chief rabbi’s office told us that an official of the RCA raised the
concerns about Rabbi Weiss with one of their officers. I asked them the source,
they said ‘if we tell you the source we won’t be able to get information from
them anymore,’" Herzfeld told Haaretz. In a sermon delivered at Ohev Torah
on Saturday, Herzfeld said, "At the meeting one of the representatives of
the chief rabbi told me that they heard that Rabbi Weiss has a female
cantor."

Weiss’ synagogue does not have a female cantor.

A spokesman for the Chief Rabbinate, Ziv Maor, told Haaretz
that he has no comment.

“I’ve spoken with all the officials of the RCA and nobody
has taken responsibility for that. We’ve never made that statement to them,”
the RCA’s Dratch told Haaretz.

Herzfeld, however, isn’t buying it. “The RCA should tell us
who their source is,” he told Haaretz. “The way [the Chief Rabbinate]
operate[s] with this secret testimony is very disturbing. We have a chief
rabbi’s office in charge of the lives of Diaspora Jewry to an expanding degree
that knows absolutely nothing about the American Jewish community. It’s
disgraceful, and the American Jewish community should be up in arms about it.”

Of what he was told by the Chief Rabbinate, “it was like a
petty political game and I left feeling really disillusioned. Even though
they’re in total retreat on Rabbi Weiss I left that office more concerned than
ever about the expanding power that they’re taking,” Herzfeld said.

Weiss told Haaretz, “one of the unfinished issues is that
the RCA did not solve my problem, but rather created the problem. It’s not good
that the RCA has a monopoly in America. That monopoly has to be broken as
well.”

The RCA has about 1,000 members and does not accept rabbis
ordained by Chovevei Torah, though it does accept rabbis ordained by Yeshiva
University. In response, Weiss and others established the International Rabbinic
Fellowship, which has some 150 members. And while Weiss wants Israel Chief
Rabbinate to accept the credibility of IRF members, first he will likely need
the RCA to do so.

Weiss has been famous for activism since demonstrating and
behind-the-scenes work on behalf of Soviet Jewry in the 1960s and 70s and in
1989, when he and others scaled walls outside a convent located at Auschwitz
and blew shofar to protest its presence at the blood-soaked Nazi death camp.
More recently, Weiss, who is the rabbi of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in
the Bronx, has prompted controversy over the boundaries of American Orthodox
Judaism. The RCA itself, of which Weiss is a longtime member, condemned his
ordination of women, terming it “a violation of our mesorah (tradition)…that
contradicts the norms of our community.”

According to the RCA’s Dratch, officials in the Chief
Rabbinate “don’t dictate to us how to be rabbis or what to do just as we don’t
dictate how they act.” As a result of negotiations with them since October over
the issue concerning Weiss and Rabbi Scot Berman, a day school consultant in
Toronto, “We have a stronger relationship today and look forward to other
opportunities to develop that.”

Once the Chief Rabbinate deemed Weiss treif last October, a
remarkable array of people — from ADL chief Abe Foxman to attorney Alan
Dershowitz to Elliot Engel, the congressman representing Weiss’ district and
ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committeee — rushed to his
defense. Their letters to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President
Shimon Peres appeared to do little to sway the chief rabbis, however.

It was only when Weiss hired an Israeli attorney and
threatened the Chief Rabbinate with a lawsuit, however, did the Chief Rabbinate
do an about-face, said Herzfeld.